Secret Life Of Bees Character Analysis

Words: 1634
Pages: 7

When it feels like love has given up on someone, they don’t know where to turn or why they are important to life, this can change however when someone with something gives them hope. Honey is known to be super sweet and calming, many use it in a state of stress or just to add to one’s coffee. However, in the book, Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily, a young teenage girl, who lost her mother at a very young age, uses it for greater purposes. Lily feels like she has never really been loved by anyone but her mother, so when honey comes into her life, she finds a sort of bond between herself and it. Lily’s relationship, in the beginning, with honey represents guidance leading her to the Boatwrights, eventually developing into a relationship of love, Lily, goes …show more content…
In this quote the emphasizing, Lily’s perception of her mother to her telling her “your jar is open” Monk Kidd suggests that if Lily were to follow where this honey takes her, she could get a world full of opportunity. Lily clearly feels a distinct connection to the honey jar because of her mother. In the beginning, honey represents guidance that Lily’s mother was never able to give her because of her passing when Lily was a little girl. With this, Lily can’t ignore the fact that the honey jar company’s logo isn’t fate that it the exact same one, and she is extremely intrigued to know more, “...when I found myself looking at a picture of the Mary...I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother’s. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey. BLACK MADONNA HONEY, they said”(63). In this interaction between Rosaleen and Lily, it shows how both of them know they have to go and find out more about the Black Madonna honey because Lily has the confidence that it is directly connected to her mother in one way or another. The honey is symbolizing a kind of guidance that mothers give their children. It is almost like